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arXiv:2107.00788 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Analytical continuation of matrix-valued functions: Carathéodory formalism

Jiani Fei, Chia-Nan Yeh, Dominika Zgid, Emanuel Gull

Published Oct 6, 2021• 64 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Finite-temperature quantum field theories are formulated in terms of Green's functions and self-energies on the Matsubara axis. In multiorbital systems, these quantities are related to positive semidefinite matrix-valued functions of the Carath\'eodory and Schur class. Analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of derived quantities such as real-frequency response functions requires analytic continuation of the off-diagonal elements to the real axis. We derive the criteria under which such functions exist for given Matsubara data and present an interpolation algorithm that intrinsically respects their mathematical properties. For small systems with precise Matsubara data, we find that the continuation exactly recovers all off-diagonal and diagonal elements. In real-materials systems, we show that the precision of the continuation is sufficient for the analytic continuation to commute with the Dyson equation, and we show that the truncation of the off-diagonal self-energy elements leads to considerable approximation artifacts.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.104.165111

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Finite-temperature quantum field theories are formulated in terms of Green's functions and self-energies on the Matsubara axis. In multiorbital systems, these quantities are related to positive semidefinite matrix-valued functions of the Carath'eodory and Schur class. Analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of derived quantities such as real-frequency response functions requires analytic continuation of the off-diagonal elements to the real axis. We derive the criteria under which such functions exist for given Matsubara data and present an interpolation algorithm that intrinsically respects their mathematical properties. For small systems with precise Matsubara data, we find that the continuation exactly recovers all off-diagonal and diagonal elements. In real-materials systems, we show that the precision of the continuation is sufficient for the analytic continuation to commute with the Dyson equation, and we show that the truncation of the off-diagonal self-energy elements leads to considerable approximation artifacts.
Analytic continuation is a central step in the simulation of finite-temperature field theories in which numerically obtained Matsubara data are continued to the real frequency axis for a physical interpretation. Numerical analytic continuation is considered to be an ill-posed problem where uncertainties on the Matsubara axis are amplified exponentially. Here, we present a systematic and controlled procedure that approximates any Matsubara function by a minimal pole representation to within a predefined precision. We then show a systematic convergence to the exact spectral function on the real axis as a function of our control parameter for a range of physically relevant setups. Our methodology is robust to noise and paves the way towards reliable analytic continuation in many-body theory and, by providing access to the analytic structure of the functions, a direct theoretical interpretation of physical properties.
We present a generalization of the maximum entropy method to the analytic continuation of matrix-valued Green's functions. To treat off-diagonal elements correctly based on Bayesian probability theory, the entropy term has to be extended for spectral functions that are possibly negative in some frequency ranges. In that way, all matrix elements of the Green's function matrix can be analytically continued; we introduce a computationally cheap element-wise method for this purpose. However, this method cannot ensure important constraints on the mathematical properties of the resulting spectral functions, namely positive semidefiniteness and Hermiticity. To improve on this, we present a full matrix formalism, where all matrix elements are treated simultaneously. We show the capabilities of these methods using insulating and metallic dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) Green's functions as test cases. Finally, we apply the methods to realistic material calculations for LaTiO3{\mathrm{LaTiO}}_{3}LaTiO3​, where off-diagonal matrix elements in the Green's function appear due to the distorted crystal structure.
The authors present here a method for analytically continuing matrix-valued correlation functions to the real axis, accurately capturing off-diagonal elements to enhance the interpretation of self-energies and susceptibilities. Based on a minimal information criterion, a selection of poles in the complex plane results in a universal noise-resistant approximation that converges reliably with increasing data precision. Comparisons with state-of-the-art techniques highlight its resolution and efficiency, establishing it as a significant advancement in computational quantum physics.
In this paper, we propose an analytic continuation method to extract real-frequency spectral functions from imaginary-frequency Green's functions of quantum many-body systems. This method is based on the pole representation of Matsubara Green's function and a stochastic sampling procedure is utilized to optimize the amplitudes and locations of poles. In order to capture narrow peaks and sharp band edges in the spectral functions, a constrained sampling algorithm and a self-adaptive sampling algorithm are developed. To demonstrate the usefulness and performance of this method, we at first apply it to study the spectral functions of representative fermionic and bosonic correlators. Then we employ this method to tackle the analytic continuation problems of matrix-valued Green's functions. The synthetic Green's functions, as well as realistic correlation functions from finite-temperature quantum many-body calculations, are used as input. The benchmark results demonstrate that this method is capable of reproducing most of the key characteristics in the spectral functions. The sharp, smooth, and multipeak features in both low- and high-frequency regions of spectral functions could be accurately resolved, which overcomes one of the main limitations of the traditional maximum entropy method. More importantly, it exhibits excellent robustness with respect to noisy and incomplete input data. The causality of spectral function is always satisfied even in the presence of sizable noises. As a by-product, this method could derive a fitting formula for the Matsubara data, which provides a compact approximation to the many-body Green's functions. Hence, we expect that this method could become a pivotal workhorse for numerically analytic continuation and be broadly useful in many applications.
Diagrammatic expansions are a central tool for treating correlated electron systems. At thermal equilibrium, they are most naturally defined within the Matsubara formalism. However, extracting any dynamic response function from a Matsubara calculation ultimately requires the ill-defined analytical continuation from the imaginary- to the real-frequency domain. It was recently proposed [A. Taheridehkordi et al., Phys. Rev. B 99, 035120 (2019)] that the internal Matsubara summations of any interaction-expansion diagram can be performed analytically by using symbolic algebra algorithms. The result of the summations is then an analytical function of the complex frequency rather than Matsubara frequency. Here we apply this principle and develop a diagrammatic Monte Carlo technique which yields results directly on the real-frequency axis. We present results for the self-energy $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}(\ensuremath{\omega})$ of the doped $32\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}32$ cyclic square-lattice Hubbard model in a nontrivial parameter regime, where signatures of the pseudogap appear close to the antinode. We discuss the behavior of the perturbation series on the real-frequency axis and in particular show that one must be very careful when using the maximum entropy method on truncated perturbation series. Our approach holds great promise for future application in cases when analytical continuation is difficult and moderate-order perturbation theory may be sufficient to converge the result.
Green's functions of fermions are described by matrix-valued Herglotz-Nevanlinna functions. Since analytic continuation is fundamentally an ill-posed problem, the causal space described by the matrix-valued Herglotz-Nevanlinna structure can be instrumental in improving the accuracy and in enhancing the robustness with respect to noise. We demonstrate a three-pronged procedure for robust analytic continuation called PES: (1) projection of data to the causal space; (2) estimation of pole locations; and (3) semidefinite relaxation within the causal space. We compare the performance of PES with the recently developed Nevanlinna and Carath\'eodory continuation methods and find that PES is more robust in the presence of noise and does not require the usage of extended precision arithmetics. We also demonstrate that a causal projection improves the performance of the Nevanlinna and Carath\'eodory methods. The PES method is generalized to bosonic response functions, for which the Nevanlinna and Carath\'eodory continuation methods have not yet been developed. It is particularly useful for studying spectra with sharp features, as they occur in the study of molecules and band structures in solids.